


5 times Bellamy kind of, sort of says "I love you" + 1 time Raven finally hears

by justbecauseyoubelievesomething



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Former Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, Love Confessions, Oblivious Raven Reyes, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbecauseyoubelievesomething/pseuds/justbecauseyoubelievesomething
Summary: He’s reminded of a girl on fire with a knife pressed to his throat. The keen edge of the blade sitting just a whisper away from his jugular. The calculating smile across her face as she waits for his fear.The image keeps him awake at night, unsure why in that moment he felt more alive than life itself.orBellamy realizes he's in love with Raven. He just can't find the right way to tell her.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Raven Reyes
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: Ravenbell New Year Fanfiction Exchange (2020)





	5 times Bellamy kind of, sort of says "I love you" + 1 time Raven finally hears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts).



> Written for the 2020 Ravenbell New Year exchange! This prompt was chosen from the full list of prompts on Tumblr.
> 
> Prompt by shortitude: Five times Bellamy tried to show his love for Raven and failed, and one time she finally got the point. Oblivious That People Might Love Her!Raven is my tragic and problematic fave.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the fic and thank you for your wonderful prompts!

  
  
  


-1

They’re walking through the woods together, rifles trembling a little against inexperienced fingers. The faintest sliver of dawn peeks through the leaves overhead, painting the woods in ghostly shadows. In the greyness of morning, Raven looks tired.

Whether it’s actually exhaustion or the tired resignation of watching Finn and Clarke moving through each other’s space again, Bellamy isn’t sure.

Jasper picks up his pace and Bellamy slows his so that they spread out, following the trail of jobi nuts to this supposed peace summit. Raven trudges along next to him, lips set in a thin resolute line.

“Hey,” Bellamy says, before he can stop himself.

She turns, gaze sharp. He’s reminded of a girl on fire with a knife pressed to his throat. The keen edge of the blade sitting just a whisper away from his jugular. The calculating smile across her face as she waits for his fear.

The image keeps him awake at night, unsure why in that moment he felt more alive than life itself.

“What?”

He’s staring, lips parted. “Um…” He stumbles, feet tangling in some sort of thorny plant and Raven laughs a little in the back of her throat.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.” Bellamy awkwardly kicks the toes of his boots along the ground as if there might be lingering vines clinging to them. “Fine.”

“Good,” she says breezily, facing forward again.

There’s a beat as they match their strides, silence only broken by their rustling footsteps and the gentle swell of birdsong in the treetops.

Bellamy finally clears his throat. “Are  _ you  _ okay?”

She looks at him again, eyebrows furrowed. He sees the moment she understands, the shadow that drifts through her gaze. She kicks a jobi nut haphazardly and watches listlessly as it skips across the ground and disappears into the undergrowth.

“Yes.”

Another beat.

“No.” She sighs and hoists her rifle up, jaw set firmly. “But I will be.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to push for more. To explain that he’s asking because he cares, maybe too much. To press her against the nearest tree and  _ show _ her that there’s some sort of spark dancing between them that he’s longing to explore.

Instead, he gives her a short nod and lets her press on ahead, cursing his own hesitation.

  
  
  


-2 

There’s a crease in her hair from her perpetual ponytail. That’s the first thing Bellamy notices as Raven’s hair swings loose down her shoulders. Her bare shoulders, gleaming in the firelight.

He swallows thickly.

She’s hurting, eyes wide with the pain of rejection. Her lip is trembling and that’s not like Raven Reyes at all. She’s searching. Searching for some kind of feeling that will drown out the other too-loud feelings.

He knows. He’s been there.

Everything in him is itching to pull her close. To let her cry against his chest and then to brush the hair back from her eyes and show her with gentle kisses along her jawline that she is beautiful. That she is loved.

But he can’t risk breaking her. Not when she stands in front of him shaking like a leaf, fists clenched at her sides, refusing to cover herself even though everything in her must be screaming to hide.

So instead what comes out of his mouth is, “If you’re looking for someone to talk you down, I’m not that guy.”

She tilts her chin up a little, in victory, maybe, or renewed stubbornness. “Good.”

He can do this for her, pretend to be someone, something else. Unfeeling, unloving, simply there for the sensation of skin on skin. Lips on frantic lips.

And if the night haunts his dreams for months to come, Raven doesn’t need to know.

  
  
  


-3 

Clarke tries her best to examine Raven’s wound, but the Grounders are closing in and there’s no time. No time at all.

Bellamy wets his lips uncertainly. If there’s ever been a time to tell her, it’s now. Here on the brink of battle. On the edge between life and death.

But Raven looks small and thin. Pale.

Her red jacket hangs around her like a mockery of the red blood staining her shirt. She’s talking about fried Grounders and rewiring engines, but Bellamy can’t stop staring at the way the corner of her lips tugs with pain after every word.

Now is not the time.

He helps her to sit on the floor, back against the wall, in a spot where she can call instructions down to Clarke beneath the ship. Raven is good at hiding pain, but even her best efforts can’t muffle the little groans she lets out as she sinks to the ground.

“Thanks,” she mutters, not unkindly. Bellamy crouches next to her. Fingers curled against his palms to keep from reaching out to steady her again.

There’s a million things he should say. A million more he wants to.

He thinks about Grounder armies closing in on their tiny camp. The certainty of a long and painful death under their blades.

The pain of a promise that can’t be fulfilled.

So instead of dropping a kiss on her forehead he sits back on his heels.

“Hey.” She looks at him and he hopes that the roughness in his voice is something she’ll attribute to nervousness, not the panic of a man in love. “Your plan is genius. It will work.”

Raven shrugs a little, but he sees the ghost of a smile hovering across her face. “ _ Our _ plan. We all came up with it.”

“But you’re the genius part of the equation.”

She laughs. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Bellamy lets his gaze linger, drinking her in. Holding himself a respectable distance away. “I’ll see you after we barbeque some Grounders. Yeah?”

Her nod is halting, but her gaze is resolute. “Yeah.”

  
  
  


-4 

When Raven’s legs buckle and a scream tears from her throat, Bellamy catches her. It’s instinctive, the way his arm wraps around her, holding her up as she cries like a wounded animal.

Even from here, they can see the way Finn is slumped over, unmoving. The way Clarke walks away, footsteps uneven, like she’s in shock.

Raven sobs with a grief that Bellamy hopes he never experiences and she slowly pulls them both towards the ground, the weight of her anguish too much to hold. Bellamy keeps his arms around her and she slowly, ever so slowly, leans into his side. Her fingers curl against his jacket, latching on to anything around her to anchor herself. Her screams fade, only because her throat is ripped raw. 

Bellamy presses into her and keeps his chin against her hair and tries to hold back his own tears. Over the loss of a friend. Over Raven’s loss.

He’s seen the way she looks at Finn, even now. Understands the feeling of a person being your place. Your home. Somewhere to belong and to fit perfectly.

Even when your home hurts you, you don’t stop loving it.

Words don’t cover wounds like this, so this time he doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he kneels in the cold, hard dirt and lets Raven curl into his side as she shakes with silent sobs and he hopes against hope that she understands what he’s trying to say. That she still has a place where she belongs. Where she fits perfectly.

Right here by his side.

  
  
  


-5

They’ve been exchanging jokes and half-insults over the makeshift radio and Bellamy knows it’s entirely inappropriate for the middle of a war, but Raven’s voice gives him something to cling to as he crawls through the Mount Weather ventilation shafts, legs cramped and head pounding with stress. So they talk and they joke and he even gets her to laugh a few times before he hears Wick’s voice chiming in.

For a split second, Bellamy freezes. A wave of red washes through his vision.

Then he breathes and he’s back, listening to Raven trade some sarcastic banter with Wick.

He’s not a possessive man. At least, he tries not to be. His relationship with Octavia has messed him up good in that respect and he knows it, but when it comes to Raven he’s been more than respectful. Distant even, he thinks now regretfully. Too distant.

If she wants to move on with Wick, he needs to be happy for her. She needs this.

He’s lying on his side in a ventilation shaft thinking about Raven getting together with Wick for no real reason. He might possibly be going insane.

Raven talks him through to the acid fog room, where huge vats line the walls and Bellamy tries not to think too much as he flips through the maintenance screen. Wick’s voice is still there between Raven’s suggestions and Bellamy itches to ask them. 

Definitely not the place or time.

“We already ran the numbers for that, Wick!” She sounds frustrated. He wonders if she’s pacing back and forth, ponytail swinging off her shoulder blades. “There has to be something I’m missing…”

_ I’m _ . Not we. She takes everything on herself without a second thought. No blame to anyone but Raven Reyes. Bellamy hates it.

And quite possibly loves her.

He clears his throat into the radio. “Can’t I just blow these up?”

He hears a pause and then Raven’s voice crackles back, “You know I love a good explosion, but that would definitely put Mount Weather on high alert.” There’s an amused tone to her voice and his lips twitch in a smile, happy to distract her from her self-deprecation. Then, “And it would kill you.”

He expects the words to come across deadpan. Joking, like they do.

Instead, she sounds a little shaken, as if letting herself consider the possibility of Bellamy’s death is one step too far in this war.   
Maybe it’s the fact that he is about one step away from death. Maybe it’s his paranoia about Wick being in the same room, breathing down her neck.

Or maybe he’s just tired of being subtle. Holding himself at arm’s length.

He takes a deep breath. “Raven?”

“...Yeah?”

_ I love you, I love you, I love you. _

“I’ll come home.”

It’s not quite what he wants to say, but it’s still the right words for once. He knows it as soon as she speaks again and he hears the smile in her voice.

“You’d better.”

  
  
  


+1

It feels a little bit like a fairytale, walking back into Camp Jaha. The ground is covered in frost, every blade of bent grass coated in glitter as the rising sun fills the world with gold. Bellamy breathes it in like a man reborn, tasting the bitter cold on the edges of his tongue.

People are everywhere. The injured are being directed deeper into the station, but many are still too shocked to move that far, simply huddling under blankets and coats around the perimeter of the camp. Bellamy should help with the traffic, organize the guards to stand watch. Do something useful.

But his eyes are drawn to one head of dark hair that stands out among the rest, her long ponytail drifted over one shoulder. He’s never seen her look so wrung out.

He takes a few steps towards her, admiring the way the sunlight gleams across her blood-streaked face and mentally corrects himself. He’s never seen her look so beautiful.

She smiles at him as he approaches.

“We did it.” She sounds half-asleep and for a moment he thinks that this still isn’t the time. Not while she’s lying on the ground, still bleeding from a half-dozen war wounds.

He settles himself on the ground, hip to hip with her, and she easily turns and rests her head against the crook of his neck. The scent of her hair breezes across his nose and he turns just a little into her so his lips are resting against her head.

Just a little.

“We did it,” he whispers in agreement.

She hums contentedly and later there will be problems to discuss, politics to tackle, consequences to deal with. Right now, Bellamy can’t imagine moving anywhere.

Raven breathes deeply, soft fluttering warmth against his shoulder and he lets his eyelids close.

“I love you,” he whispers into her hair, so faintly he can barely hear himself. He feels a sigh of relief from deep inside. Even if she never hears him, the words are out there now. A fire released into the open air to burn as it will.

Then he feels the curl of her smile against his skin and her hand slides down his wrist to rest on top of his bruised knuckles. “I love you too.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
